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Standpipe Flaw Examined in Fire at Ground Zero

The Fire Department is investigating whether a malfunctioning standpipe sent water cascading into the basement of the flaming Deutsche Bank tower at ground zero on Saturday, denying water to air-starved firefighters battling the seven-alarm blaze above, including the two men who were killed.

Members of Engine Company 7 said they connected their hose to the standpipe and pumped thousands of gallons into the building, but one investigator said yesterday that the water never made it beyond the fifth floor, leading to suspicions of a cracked or broken valve. The basement, officials said, was filled with water.

Firefighters were forced to spend crucial moments carrying and pulling hoses up the sides of the ghostly black-shrouded building — a scarred remnant of the 9/11 attacks that was being dismantled — as wind-driven flames caught on 13 different floors after snaking up and down through voids and holes.

Officials were still trying to determine the cause of the blaze, suspecting either a tossed cigarette or a faulty electrical panel, but one thing was clear: From the beginning, even before the standpipe failed, the blaze presented a series of unique challenges to those fighting it.

The building had been contaminated by the fallout of Sept. 11 with toxic substances and tiny bits of human remains; insurance fights delayed its fate for years. Asbestos had been removed from the building, and sealed plywood hatches in stairwells divided the floors, forcing firefighters — possibly including the two who died — into the wide-open floors, where they could easily become disoriented.

Containment areas of plywood and thick plastic sheeting meant to keep in potentially dangerous particles sucked in air, fanning flames. Plywood that had replaced windows on the upper floors can be seen burning in photographs.

Flames got around and under the firefighters who died, Robert Beddia, 53, and Joseph Graffagnino, 33. A voice believed to be that of Firefighter Beddia was heard on a radio transmission saying he had run out of air and was trying to follow his hose out. It may have been his last transmission.

“There were problems getting water on the fire,” one official said. “They are trapped and they run out of air because of how rapidly the conditions change, and now they have no refuge and they cannot get out. They now cannot see and they have no air.”

Gov. Eliot Spitzer and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the state agency that owns the building, promised investigations, and an official with the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration said the agency had cited the John Galt Corporation, the subcontractor doing the demolition, for 20 serious violations at the building.

At the same time, officials said that results of air test results from around the building were negative for asbestos, but that it would take several days before they knew about other substances.

Residents in the area expressed an array of frustrations.

“You’d think that after six years, we would have learned something, but when this fire broke out, there was no notification system in place, and the people who live around here didn’t know what to do,” said Patricia L. Moore, who lives at 125 Cedar Street, in the shadow of the burned building. “Some of us left the building and some of us stayed, but we’re all concerned.”

Avi Schick, the chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, said the fire was a “perfect storm of misfortune that worked together to turn what is, under any circumstance, a hazardous situation into something that was perhaps even more treacherous.”

Mr. Schick said the mechanism to ensure negative air pressure within the containment areas might have worsened conditions by bringing in a supply of outside air that wound up feeding the flames and by drawing smoke across the floor without fully venting it, since the exhausts have filters designed to trap particles in the air.

“It’s likely that the very measures that were insisted upon by the E.P.A. to protect those on the outside had a less than salutary effect when the fire started, because there were too many pulls on the oxygen,” Mr. Schick said. “And the firefighters paid the ultimate price.” Officials said the fire would delay the dismantling of the building by about three weeks.

In addition to the transmission believed to be from Firefighter Beddia, Fire Department radios captured other snippets of Saturday’s chaos and confusion. One fire investigator said that as many as 20 mayday calls were issued from the 14th and surrounding floors in the fatal moments that claimed the two men, apparently when the conditions of the fire changed quickly.

A senior official, captured in a recording of live Fire Department radio communications, cursed as he said he did not care about the building, and shouted, “Where are my men?” The Fire Department could not confirm who made the radio transmissions, pending its own review and transcription of them. “We have tapes of the transmissions, and they’re with our Safety Division, and we’re not releasing them,” said Francis X. Gribbon, the department’s chief spokesman.

Photo

A member of the Fire Department escorted the wife of Firefighter Joseph Graffagnino into her home in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.Credit
Robert Stolarik for The New York Times

Bringing down the Deutsche Bank building has been a troubled and painstaking process, as well as an ongoing source of debate and lawsuits since almost immediately after Sept. 11. Despite that, and the amount of time dedicated to vetting the various health hazards, the only mechanism in place to get water to firefighters in an emergency was the standpipe system.

In fact, within the elaborate plans that the main contractor, Bovis Lend Lease, filed with the city in September 2006, fire protection merited a single sentence: “A dry fire standpipe shall be maintained within the building throughout the duration of the deconstruction process.”

John Galt was hired by Bovis, and was responsible for maintaining the standpipe and testing it, said Mary Costello, a spokeswoman for Bovis.

The fire broke out on the 17th floor. While the cause is still not known, one person with direct knowledge of the investigation said that numerous cigarette butts had been found in the building, even though workers were not supposed to smoke. Interviews with as many as 200 workers who were present on Saturday were expected to begin today. The elevator operator who first saw the fire was interviewed for a second time yesterday.

Firefighters from Engine Company 7 hooked up to the standpipe set aside for Fire Department use, but the water never made it beyond the fifth floor. Officials are investigating whether other standpipes were working and how multiple pipes operated in tandem.

Firefighters Beddia and Graffagnino made it to the 15th floor, but the fire got below them. It burned in spots on every floor from 14 to 26. At the height of the blaze, more than 100 firefighters were inside the building.

Firefighters Beddia and Graffagnino managed to get down to the 14th floor, and were found lying there, near a hose line they are believed to have carried up in an exterior elevator. They died of what appeared to be cardiac arrest resulting from exposure to carbon monoxide, officials said.

The men were the 15th and 16th from the firehouse to fall victim to fatal fires since 1994. That year, three died in an apartment blaze on Watts Street. Eleven more perished on Sept. 11, 2001.

The OSHA violations against John Galt carried fines of up to $67,500 — include those stemming from an incident on May 17 when a 22-foot metal pipe fell from the 35th floor through the roof of a firehouse across the street, halting work for about a week, the agency’s Manhattan-area director, Richard Mendelson, said yesterday. The plywood was placed in the windows to prevent a repeat of that incident.

In another incident earlier that month, scaffolding on which two men were working collapsed, Mr. Mendelson said.

Two other inspections, one several weeks ago and another stemming from the fire Saturday, could result in additional citations, he said. The company did not return a call yesterday to its offices seeking comment.

All utilities — including normal water service — had to be turned off at 130 Liberty Street, just as they are at any building under demolition. Air monitors are in place in and around the building, and the Office of Emergency Management said yesterday that test results so far showed no evidence of asbestos in the air.

But Joel R. Kupferman, executive director of the New York Environmental Law and Justice Project, a nonprofit public interest group, noted that tests for a host of other contaminants at the Deutsche Bank building were not complete.

“They didn’t test for everything,” Mr. Kupferman said. “And if we look at what’s causing people to fall ill, what’s killing them, it’s more than just asbestos that’s doing that.”

On Sept. 11, a section of 2 World Trade Center, the south tower, fell onto the bank building, ripping open a 15-story gash. For nearly four years after the attacks, the building’s future remained in limbo amid disputes with insurers and the discovery of high levels of asbestos, dioxin, lead, quartz, chromium, manganese and other contaminants in the building. It was shrouded in black netting.

In August 2004, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation took ownership of the building. A year later, the corporation signed a two-year, $75 million contract with Bovis Lend Lease to clean and dismantle the contaminated tower, but a month later, progress was stalled when workers found bone fragments in the gravel on the tower’s roof. Some 760 fragments were eventually found.

Last June, the start of demolition was delayed again after the Environmental Protection Agency raised fresh concerns about air monitoring. In December, workers for John Galt walked off the job in a dispute over the rising costs of the project. Governor Spitzer and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg stepped in to broker a settlement, and demolition finally began in February.